Who is Integrated Strategies?

October 31, 2007

As a consulting company, the value that we provide our customers is the gathered intellectual knowledge we have in our company. The solutions that we are able to bring to the table are developed based on the tools our employees have picked up and developed over the years. Sometimes we come up with a truly unique idea that is able to bring something new to the table, but those are often developed out of simple modifications to existing ideas.

One of the reasons that we maintain and update this blog so regularly is to provide an output for some of the knowledge we have that others may be able to use as well. We try and advertise this site to our current and previous clients in case there is additional value hear that they can use. We advertise it to our internal clients and business partners as a way of keeping them up to date on the latest methods we have and to remind them of things we can do they may have forgotten about. The third reason is to help establish ourselves as thought leaders in the industry.

It would be nice to be the size of the CBRE Consulting group or FTI. We eventually hope to get there and we believe that we are at least as good as them and probably better at most things we do. Our goal is to drive the industry towards constant improvement and create not only a company that is innovative and continually increasing the value we bring to the table but also to create an industry that continues to innovate and improve. We look out at the software industry and see the stagnation that came around because market giants became comfortable with their position. New companies like Google and Yahoo came along and is slowly eliminating the software industry as we knew it. Software as a Service is becoming more and more accepted and popular.

The way we push the giants in our industry is by letting them know where we are and letting their customers know where we are. We'll get our business if we do a great job of helping out clients, we'll continue on our growth curve. We want the industry to be forced to react to us because their clients require them to provide what we are providing. We don't want to hide behind proprietary services that no one else has. Everyone should know what we have and what we offer because we are more than happy to offer our services even to CBRE or FTI when they can't do what we can and their client demands it. That's how you become the industry leader, that's how you grow your business and develop a solid reputation.

Toyota helped to create a legacy with their Toyota Production System. They developed a better way to manufacture cars and tighten up their supply chain. Response time improved, inventory carrying costs went down and they were noticed by everyone within the manufacturing industry. Not just by auto manufacturers or vehicle manufacturers but by anyone who produced anything in a manufacturing environment. Everyone did not put the system in place but everyone knew about it and its benefits. We want to be Toyota. We want to be the company that changes the way people look at our industry.

The Business Services sector has a lot of room to improve. We offer value to any business in America whether they realize it or not. Our job is to find that value we can bring and extract it for our clients. We work with outside service providers ourselves and understand as well as anyone that not everything can be kept inside. No company can gather every type of intellectual capital they need to run their business to its fullest potential.

The biggest reason that companies decide not to use consulting companies is not that they are running a great operation but that the cost of extracting value is high even if the Return on Investment is under a year. How much are you willing to spend to save $10 million every year if you are a $100 million dollar company? $1 million? $5 million? $15 million? What is that capital worth? Why wouldn't you spend $10 million to save $10 million on a repeating basis? This is exactly the situation that many companies find themselves in but instead of making the decision they stick to the status quo. They've lived with it so far, why not continue and not spend the money.

It won't be long before someone figures out the way to bring down the cost of extracting value. A venture capital company will eventually come along that invests in saving other companies money. We'll be there to help them lead the way.